William Henry Harrison

William Henry Harrison (February 9, 1773 – April 4, 1841) was the ninth president of the United States from March to April 1841. He died 31 days into his term, making him the shortest serving president and the first president to die in office. Immediately after his death, vice president John Tyler took over, ending the constitutional crisis that had been triggered by the question of presidential succession in the U.S. Constitution. Harrison was born in Charles City County, Virginia. He was the last president to be born before the U.S. Declaration of Independence, making him a British subject. A member of the Harrison family of Virginia, he was a son of Benjamin Harrison V, a Founding Father, and the father of John Scott Harrison, the only son and father of two presidents of the United States. His grandson, Benjamin Harrison, became the 23rd president of the United States. In 1794, he participated in the Battle of Fallen Timbers, an American military victory that ended the Northwest Indian War. In 1811, he led a military force against Tecumseh's confederacy at the Battle of Tippecanoe, for which he earned the nickname "Old Tippecanoe". He was promoted to major general in the Army during the War of 1812, and led American infantry and cavalry to victory at the Battle of the Thames in Upper Canada. Harrison's political career began in 1798, with an appointment as secretary of the Northwest Territory. In 1799, he was elected as the territory's non-voting delegate in the U.S. House of Representatives. He became governor of the newly established Indiana Territory in 1801 and, through multiple treaties with American Indian tribes, he acquired millions of acres for the nation. After the War of 1812, he moved to Ohio where, in 1816, he was elected to represent the state's 1st district in the House. In 1824, he was elected to the U.S. Senate, though his Senate term was cut short by his appointment as minister plenipotentiary to Gran Colombia in 1828. Harrison returned to private life in Ohio until he was one of four Whig Party nominees in the 1836 U.S. presidential election, which he lost to Democrat Martin Van Buren. In the 1840 presidential election, the party nominated him again, with John Tyler as his running mate, under the campaign slogan "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too", and Harrison defeated Van Buren. Just three weeks after his inauguration, Harrison fell ill and died days later. After resolution of an ambiguity in the constitution regarding succession, Tyler became president. Harrison is remembered for his Indian treaties, and also his inventive election campaign tactics. He is often omitted in historical presidential rankings due to the brevity of his tenure. ### Early life William Henry Harrison was the seventh and youngest child of Benjamin Harrison V and Elizabeth (Bassett) Harrison. Born on February 9, 1773, at Berkeley Plantation, the home of the Harrison family of Virginia on the James River in Charles City County, he became the last United States president not born as an American citizen. The Harrisons were a prominent political family of English descent whose ancestors had been in Virginia since the 1630s. His father was a Virginia planter, who served as a delegate to the Continental Congress and who signed the Declaration of Independence. His father also served in the Virginia legislature and as the fifth governor of Virginia (1781–1784) in the years during and after the American Revolutionary War. Harrison's older brother Carter Bassett Harrison represented Virginia in the House of Representatives (1793–1799). William Henry often referred to himself as a "child of the revolution", as indeed he was, having grown up in a home just 30 mi (48 km) from where Washington won the war against the British in the Battle of Yorktown. Harrison was tutored at home until age 14 when he attended Hampden–Sydney College, a Presbyterian college in Hampden Sydney, Virginia. He studied there for three years, receiving a classical education that included Latin, Greek, French, logic, and debate. His Episcopalian father removed him from the college, possibly for religious reasons, and after brief stays at an academy in Southampton County, Virginia, and with his elder brother Benjamin Harrison VI in Richmond, he went to Philadelphia in 1790. His father died in the spring of 1791, and he was placed in the care of Robert Morris, a close family friend in Philadelphia. He studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. While at Penn, he studied with Benjamin Rush, a founding father of the United States, a Penn professor of chemistry and medicine, and a doctor, and William Shippen Sr. William Harrison's older brother inherited their father's money, so William lacked the funds for his further medical schooling, which he had also discovered he did not prefer. He withdrew from Penn, although school archives record him as a "non-graduate alumnus of Penn's medical school class of 1793". With the influence of his father's friend, Governor Henry Lee III, he embarked upon a military career. === Early military career === On August 16, 1791, within 24 hours of meeting Lee, William Harrison, age 18, was commissioned as an ensign in the United States Army and assigned to the First American Regiment. He was initially assigned to Fort Washington, Cincinnati in the Northwest Territory where the army was engaged in the ongoing Northwest Indian War. Biographer William W. Freehling says that young Harrison, in his first military act, rounded up about eighty thrill-seekers and troublemakers off Philadelphia's streets, talked them into signing enlistment papers, and marched them to Fort Washington. Harrison was promoted to lieutenant after Major General "Mad Anthony" Wayne took command of the western army in 1792, after a disastrous defeat under Arthur St. Clair. In 1793, he became Wayne's aide-de-camp and acquired the skills to command an army on the frontier; he participated in Wayne's decisive victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers on August 20, 1794, which ended the Northwest Indian War. He received the following commendation from Wayne for his role in the battle: "I must add the name of my faithful and gallant Aide-de-camp ... Lieutenant Harrison, who ... rendered the most essential service by communicating my orders in every direction ... conduct and bravery exciting the troops to press for victory." Harrison was a signatory of the Treaty of Greenville (1795), as witness to Wayne, the principal negotiator for the U.S. Under the terms of the treaty, a coalition of Indians ceded a portion of their lands to the federal government, opening two-thirds of Ohio to settlement. At his mother's death in 1793, Harrison inherited a portion of his family's Virginia estate, including approximately 3,000 acres (12 km2) of land and some slaves. He was serving in the Army at the time and sold the land to his brother. Harrison was promoted to captain in May 1797 and resigned from the Army on June 1, 1798. === Marriage and family === Harrison met Anna Tuthill Symmes of North Bend, Ohio in 1795 when he was 22. She was a daughter of Anna Tuthill and Judge John Cleves Symmes, who served as a colonel in the Revolutionary War and as a representative to the Congress of the Confederation. Harrison asked the judge for permission to marry Anna but was refused, so the couple waited until Symmes left on business. They then eloped and were married on November 25, 1795, at the North Bend home of Stephen Wood, treasurer of the Northwest Territory. They honeymooned at Fort Washington, since Harrison was still on military duty. Judge Symmes confronted him two weeks later at a farewell dinner for General Wayne, sternly demanding to know how he intended to support a family. Harrison responded, "by my sword, and my own right arm, sir". The match was advantageous for Harrison, as he eventually exploited his father-in-law's connections with land speculators, which facilitated his departure from the army. Judge Symmes' doubts about him persisted, as he wrote to a friend, "He can neither bleed, plead, nor preach, and if he could plow I should be satisfied." Matters eventually became cordial with the father-in-law, who later sold the Harrisons 160 acres (65 ha) of land in North Bend, which enabled Harrison to build a home and start a farm. Anna was frequently in poor health during their marriage, primarily because of her many pregnancies, yet she outlived William by 23 years, dying on February 25, 1864, at 88. The Harrisons had ten children: Elizabeth Bassett (1796–1846) John Cleves Symmes (1798–1830), who married the only surviving daughter of Zebulon Pike Lucy Singleton (1800–1826) William Henry Jr. (1802–1838) John Scott (1804–1878), father of future U.S. president Benjamin Harrison Benjamin (1806–1840) Mary Symmes (1809–1842) Carter Bassett (1811–1839) Anna Tuthill (1813–1865) James Findlay (1814–1817) Professor Kenneth R. Janken, in his biography of Walter Francis White, claims that Harrison had six children by an enslaved African-American woman named Dilsia and, before running for president, gave four of them to a brother to avoid scandal. The assertion is based on the White family's oral…